100. Martha Lane Fox, Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho

Lane Fox launched online travel site Lastminute.com in 1998 during the dotcom bubble. It was one of the few businesses to survive the crash, going on to be purchased for £577 million in 2005. She entered the House of Lords in 2013, becoming its youngest female member.

99. Rodolfo Rosini of Weave.ai

The company wants to transform the mobile experience using artificial intelligence (AI), contextual search and deeplinking, learning from users as it goes and offering them information and services from the other apps on a phone.

CEO Rodolfo Rosini previously cofounded AI company Storybricks, which used AI in video games. He was also the CEO of security company Cellcrypt.

98. Former Google Ventures general partner Eze Vidra

One of Google's most high-profile executives in the UK, Vidra was part of Google Ventures' European fund. He was previously known as the head of Google Campus, Google's large coworking office space for startups in the middle of the east London tech scene. He's also behind the Tech Bikers charity effort, started in 2012, where startup founders and employees participate in a long-distance bike race from Paris to London to raise money for charity.

97. Tech City UK CEO Gerard Grech

The organisation was set up initially to support the thriving startup scene in East London but today it is tasked with supporting startups in tech clusters across the UK, from Edinburgh and Brighton to Manchester and Cambridge.

Over the last year Grech has launched a number of initiatives at Tech City UK, including Upscale -- a six-month pilot programme designed to accelerate the growth of 25 early stage high-growth digital businesses.

95. Seedcamp cofounder Reshma Sohoni

In December 2015, Sohoni joined up with Taavet Hinrikus, one of the cofounders of TransferWise, to back a new online payments startup called Curve. Details on Curve are scarce as the company is running in stealth mode and yet to publicly disclose what its platform actually does.

Seedcamp focuses on investing in pre-seed and seed stage startups, backing ambitious founders in the process. In addition to funding, Seedcamp gives startups access to venture capitalists and mentors.

Yieldify's software tracks user actions online and sends personalised offers in pop ups if they go to leave the site and in emails if they do leave. The idea is to get people to think again about buying something they decided not to purchase.

The London startup also has offices in New York, as well as sites in Berlin, Porto, and Sydney.

92. Legacy Russell of Artsy

Legacy Russell works for Artsy, which is an online platform that aims to provide a way for people to discover art they will like, featuring work from leading galleries, museums, and private collections around the world.

91. Former hacker Mustafa Al-Bassam

21-year-old Mustafa Al-Bassam made headlines for all the wrong reasons three years ago — when he was named as one of the individuals involved in the notorious hacking group LulzSec.

LulzSec hit everything from Fox to the NHS, and for his part, Al-Bassam was handed down a 20-month suspended sentence by the UK courts.

He’s now studying computer science at King’s College in London (after a two-year internet ban), and is rising in prominence in the UK tech scene — Forbes recently named him one of its “30 Under 30” to watch in European tech.

90. Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Sajid Javid

Sajid Javid wields considerable power over the UK tech scene: He's the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills.

The Conservative Party politician is MP for Bromsgrove, and was appointed in the position a little under a year ago, in May 2015.

While some politicians -- like Conservative Party London Mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith -- have been critical of ride-hailing app Uber's presence in the city, Javid is more positive about the tech, warning about 'heavy handed' crackdowns on the service.

Though he only entered Parliament for the first time in 2010, he's being tipped by some as a potential contender for the Conservative Party leadership when David Cameron stands down.

87. Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge

To most people, emojis are little more than a curiosity -- a way to inject levity, or flirtation, into otherwise dry text messages. But for Jeremy Burge, they're quite literally his livelihood.

The 31-year-Australian is on a mission to catalogue and categorise the pictograms. Over the last three years, he has built a 140-million-pageviews-a-year-business around them almost singlehandedly: Emojipedia, an online encyclopedia of emojis.

Emojipedia began as a side-project, but after interest exploded, Burge went full-time in 2015. He works out of Google Campus in London, and the site also has a developer working for it nearly full-time, as well as a designer who comes on when required.

Entirely self-funded, Emojipedia had six-figure revenues in 2015 -- and that's set to double this year.

86. ROLI CEO Roland Lamb

It's behind the 'Seaboard' -- a new kind of musical instrument that looks superficially similar to an electric keyboard, but with far more control and customisability.

The former philosophy student's company launched its third instrument -- the Rise 49 -- in January 2016, and it has bagged $20 million (£14 million) in VC money, with backers including Index Ventures and Balderton Capital.

ROLI has multiple design awards under its belt -- most recently the 'Best of Innovation' award at CES in Las Vegas this year.

82. Yavli CEO Tom Yeomans

Tom Yeomans

Yeomans is CEO of London startup Yavli, which first started its life as a software company that served sponsored content to millennial audiences. Around two years ago, the company pivoted in response to the huge rise in consumers using ad blocking software.

80. Hiroki Takeuchi of GoCardless

GoCardless

Oxford grad Hiroki Takeuchi was so convinced of the idea for GoCardless that he and cofounder Matt Robinson decamped to Silicon Valley's legendary accelerator Y Combinator to get it off the ground. The startup uses smart technology to make it much easier for businesses to accept and process direct debits.

77. Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley OBE

Kasumi

Jason Kingsley is an unconventional CEO.

For starters, he's a knight. And not just the run-of-the-mill, honoured-by-the-Queen-for-services-to-industry knight. Kingsley is a real knight. He's a keen jouster, breeds warhorses, and spends tens of thousands on custom suits of armour.

When he's not on horseback, he's running Rebellion, an Oxford-based gaming company he cofounded with his brother in 1992.

Its main focus is video games, creating titles for a variety of platforms, but also has smaller operations in other areas, including book publishing and comic books. It owns 2000AD, the comic anthology responsible for the famous dystopian Judge Dredd series.

Kingsley is also on the board of TIGA, a games industry body, and Rebellion plans to launch its first virtual reality game this year -- a remake of classic arcade tank-shooter 'Battlezone.'

76. Dominic Smales of Gleam Futures

The company manages big-name social influencers including Zoella, Jim Chapman, and Tanya Burr. The new breed of celebrities that Smales manages have made their names on digital platforms like Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, and Vine.

O'Hear is also working on a tech project of his own, the music discovery site Weekly.fm that shares music through the format of weekly emails. He was previously the CEO and cofounder of Q&A site Beepl.

Before joining Google Ventures, Larizadeh Duggan was the cofounder of fashion retail startup Boticca. She also held product management roles at Skype and eBay in addition to being an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Accel Partners.

71. David Buttress of Just Eat

Just Eat

Just Eat is an online ordering service that lets people search for local restaurants and order takeaway food. CEO David Buttress joined the company in 2013 after working in sales for Coca-Cola for eight years, where he won the account manager of the year award.

Just Eat announced in February 2016 that it had acquired four online food delivery companies in a £94.7 million deal. It now owns Spain's La Nevera Roja, Italy's PizzaBo/hellofood Italy, Brazil's hellofood Brazil, and Mexico's hellofood Mexico.

70. Sarah Drinkwater of Google Campus

Google

Sarah Drinkwater works for Google as head of Campus London, a seven-storey space operated by Google for entrepreneurs near Old Street Roundabout.

Since its inception just over three years ago, Campus has developed a community of 45,000 people. It aims to provide open access education, mentorship, working space and events that are of interest to the startup community.

In 2015, Drinkwater became a mentor to Girls in Tech London, which aims to help talented young women learn skills for tech roles.

69. Sonali De Rycker of Accel Partners

Accel Ventures

Accel Partners is one of London's most respected venture capital firms, with a strong stable of tech talent. And de Rycker is one of Europe's most experienced capitalists, having worked for over 14 years investing in startups.

In recent years De Rycker has overseen investments in big-name European startup successes such as Spotify, Moo, Seatwave and Wonga. She was previously an independent director on the board of IAC. Starting her career as an Analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co., she went on to join Atlas Venture in 2000.

68. Jeff Lynn of Seedrs

The downside to crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo is that you don't get any stake in the eventual company your investment helps build. When these companies cash out, it can sometimes leave an bitter taste in supporters' mouths, as was the case for some backers of VR headset Oculus when it sold to Facebook.

That's not the case with Seedrs, a London-based equity crowdfunding platform.

Users invest (as little as £10), and in return, they get a share of the company. It's clearly an attractive prospect: The company recently recently announced that £100 million has been invested through its platform.

It was cofounded by Jeff Lynn, a former corporate lawyer, who serves as CEO. In June 2015, tennis pro Andy Murray joined as an advisor.

66. Peter Smith and Nic Cary of Blockchain

Blockchain

Blockchain is a London-based bitcoin startup, with cofounder Peter Smith in the role of CEO and Nic Cary, another cofounder, acting as its public face.

It was launched in 2011, and offers a number of bitcoin services, including a tool for exploring transactions on the blockchain (the public ledger of all bitcoin transactions), and a wallet for holding bitcoin.

In October 2014, it raised $30 million (£20.7 million) in VC funding, which was then the largest ever raise for a bitcoin startup.

Back in July 2015, Peter Smith was chosen to accompanying British Prime Minister David Cameron on a trade mission in South-East Asia along with a host of other more conventional companies. Nic Cary is a regular on the conference circuit, speaking publicly on behalf of Blockchain about the possibilities that bitcoin offers.

65. Christian Hernandez Gallardo of White Star Capital

White Star Capital

White Star Capitalannounced in November 2015 that it had raised a $70 million (£48 million) fund to invest in startups in Europe and the East Coast of the US. Backers include the Canadian government, the chair of auction house Christie's, and the founder of Cirque du Soleil.

White Star partner and cofounder Christian Hernandez Gallardo is a former Facebook executive who was the company's director of EMEA until 2013 when he left to join White Star Capital.

63. George Spencer of Rentify

Rentify

George Spencer, in his late twenties, is CEO of a proptech startup -- Rentify, which provides tools for landlords to manage properties, as well as other rental-focused services. The company takes a cut of a property's rent in return for managing everything to do with it.

Created in 2011 (and formally launching in 2012), it's backed by London venture capital firm Balderton Capital, and raised £5.5 million last year.

62. Elizabeth Varley of TechHub

TechHub

Elizabeth Varley founded TechHub in 2010 after realising that London was lacking in shared workspaces for tech companies. TechHub was one of the first hubs for tech startups in London, situating itself around the Old Street area. In 2012 it opened up office space in Google Campus, a larger workspace for internet startups sponsored by Google.

In February 2015 it was announced that TechHub will expand its partnership with Google into three new locations: India, Latvia, and Romania. TechHub members in those countries now have access to Google for Entrepreneurs services.

61. Sherry Coutu of The Scale-Up Institute

Scaleup Institute

Sherry Coutu is an entrepreneur turned angel investor who's keen to promote and support the UK's fastest-growing technology companies.

In 2015 Coutu launched The Scale-Up Institute with LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman. Backed by Google, the Business Growth Fund, the London Stock Exchange and several advisory firms, the organisation aims to provide promising startups with advice on leadership, export markets and raising finance alongside, access to a network of advisors.

60. Alexandra Chong of Lulu

OnLulu.com

Alexandra Chong is the founder of Lulu, the app that lets women review and rate the men they date. She started the company in London in 2010. The site launched with $1 million in investment from VC firms Passion Capital and PROfounders Capital. But it changed focus in 2013 to expand to the US and embrace the college culture there that had helped Tinder grow.

59. Brent Hoberman CBE of Founders Factory

Getty Images Europe

Lastminute.com cofounder Brent Hoberman is an entrepreneur, investor and non-executive director at a number of British corporates, including Guardian Media Group and Talk Talk.

In 2010, Hoberman cofounded made.com, an online e-commerce platform providing designer furniture without third party involvement. Today he is chairman of the company. Last July, made.com raised $60 million (£41 million) in a Series C funding round.

58. Net-a-Porter founder Natalie Massenet MBE

Larry Busacca/ Getty Images

Natalie Massenet founded online fashion portal Net-a-Porter in 2000 when she was trying to find designer goods for a fashion shoot. The site sells clothes using a layout similar to traditional fashion magazines.

Before starting Net-a-Porter, Massenet worked as a fashion model in Tokyo, assistant at Tatler, fashion stylist, and also worked with photographer Mario Testino. She's Chairman of the British Fashion Council, and received an MBE in 2009 for services to the fashion industry.

55. Husayn Kassai of Onfido

Onfido

Oxford graduate Husayn Kassai quit his job at Merrill Lynch in 2012 after just a week to focus on building a startup he'd cofounded at university.

That startup was background checking service Onfido, which has now raised over $5 million (£3.5 million) from a wide range of investors, including Spotify backers Wellington Partners and lastminute.com cofounder Brent Hoberman. It is now considered one of Britain's smartest companies.

Onfido -- which now employs 72 people across offices in London, San Francisco, and Lisbon -- boasts over 625 paying customers, including recruiter Morgan McKinley and Hays, and newspapers like The Daily Mail and the Evening Standard.

54. Philosopher Nick Bostrom

Likely the smartest person on this list, Nick Bostrom is a philosopher who specialises in artificial intelligence, human enhancement, and other topics relating to the future of humanity.

The 42-year-old Swede works as an academic at the University of Oxford, but his writing has mainstream appeal too: Superintelligence, his most recent book, published in 2014, was a New York Times bestseller.

He's been been cited as an influence by Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO -- another high-profile tech figure worried about the potentially adverse consequences of creating AI. In 2016, the issues that Bostrom writes about are more relevant than ever before.

52. George Ergatoudis of Spotify

Ergatoudis is the new head of content programming for the UK at music streaming giant Spotify. He joined the company at the start of 2016 after over 10 years in charge of music at BBC Radio 1. He previously worked as the head of music policy for the BBC's hip hop and grime radio station 1Xtra.

51. Guy Levin of Coadec

Guy Levin is the executive director of The Coalition for a Digital Economy (Coadec), a policy advisory group started by Mike Butcher, editor of tech news website TechCrunch, and Jeff Lynn, chief executive of equity crowdfunding Seedrs.

49. Zoopla CEO Alex Chesterman

British property listings site Zoopla was founded in 2007 by serial entrepreneur Alex Chesterman, one of the cofounders of movie-streaming service LoveFilm, which was sold to Amazon in 2011. As well as serving as CEO of Zoopla, Chesterman is an active investor; he has investments in sports e-commerce site SportsPursuit and student booking site Uniplaces. In June 2015 Chesterman invested in Farmdrop, a service that lets people buy food direct from farmers.

Zoopla said in August that Chesterman could be in line for £19 million worth of shares as an incentive to keep him involved with the company.

Shields previously worked as a managing director for Google in Europe, ran Bebo, worked at AOL, and was then recruited by Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg to run Facebook in Europe. She was also the CEO of Tech City UK.

46. Emily Brooke of Blaze

Linkedin

Emily Brooke is the founder and CEO of Blaze, a London startup that has built a laser bike light that can help save cyclists lives.

Blaze's 'Laserlight' is designed to improve rider safety by projecting a green laser image five to six metres in front of the cyclist, thereby making them more visible to drivers, pedestrians, and other cyclists.

Brooke, who took part in the first ever Entrepreneur First startup building programme, scored a major win for Blaze in December when it was announced that Santander planned to fit every 'Boris bike' in London with a Blaze Laserlight. The deal is said to be worth close to £1 million.

45. Luke Lang and Darren Westlake of Crowdcube

Luke Lang and Darren Westlake are the cofounders of Crowdcube, Britain's biggest crowdfunding website. Over £138 million has been invested over the platform into businesses like burrito chain Chillango and Camden Town Brewery.

Old school City of London stockbroker Numis invested £6 million in the company last July and the pair are working together to do the world's first crowdfunded initial public offering.

43. Kate Unsworth of Vinaya

Vinaya

Kate Unsworth is the CEO and cofounder of Vinaya (formerly Kovert Designs), a London-based fashion startup that makes connected jewellery, including rings and necklaces that buzz when you receive a WhatsApp message or email, for example.

42. Bruce Daisley of Twitter

Twitter

Bruce Daisley was promoted to become Twitter's vice president of direct sales for Europe in April last year. He was previously the company's UK country manager and is now the company's most senior employee outside the US.

Twitter represented 1.6% of digital ad spending in the region (or £129.3 million) in 2015, eMarketer estimates. The region made up 5% of Twitter's monthly active user base in 2015, according to eMarketer.

Prior to joining Twitter, Daisley was responsible for leading UK sales for YouTube and Google's online display advertising unit.

41. Fred Destin of Accel Partners

Accel Partners

Though originally Belgian, Fred Destin now lives in London, where he works as a partner for top-tier venture capital investment firm Accel Partners.

Destin sits on the board of Deliveroo, a London-based rapidly expanding food delivery startup, after investing in its Series B in January 2015. Accel has invested in Deliveroo three times over the last year, most recently as a participant in a $100 million (£69 million) round in November 2015.

Before joining Darktrace, which is backed by Mike Lynch's invoke capital fund, Palmer was a cyber security technical expert at GCHQ and MI5. During his time at Britain's spy agencies, he was tasked with looking after their IT infrastructure and keeping an eye on their networks.

39. Kieran O'Neill of Thread

Thread

Kieran O'Neill is the CEO of Thread, which helps customers make sense of the world of fashion by matching them up with their own personal stylist through its platform. The stylist learns about users and suggests clothes that they think would suit them. Users can then purchase the items through the site. Thread is free to use, but the company takes a cut of any purchases that you make.

It was announced in August that Thread had raised $8 million (£5.5 million) from investors including Balderton Capital, Google DeepMind cofounders Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman, and former Saks Fifth Avenue president Andrew Jennings.

CEO Kieran O'Neill started his first online business in 2003 when he founded video streaming website HolyLemon.com while studying for his GCSE. He eventually sold the site for $1.25 million (£814,000).

After graduating with a degree in law from the University of Cambridge, Ahmed studied journalism at Goldsmith's College. He became a news trainee at The Times, after which he began his focus on the tech sector.

36. Former Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti

Shami Chakrabarti is a giant of British civil society. She's the director of Liberty, an 82-year-old London human rights organisation.

Liberty's remit extends well beyond the tech sphere -- but in the years since Edward Snowden's revelations about Western governments' surveillance, Liberty has championed digital rights just as it has traditional civil liberties.

A former Home Office barrister, she has honourary degrees from Southampon, Glamorgan, and Middlesex universities, and is the chancellor at the University of Essex. She was even a flag-bearer at the 2012 Olympics in London.

35. Localglobe founder Robin Klein

Index Ventures

Robin Klein (Saul Klein's father) is a well-known investor in Europe that sits on the boards of several London startups. Klein is also on the Tech City Advisory board and an advisor to Silicon Valley Bank.

Moffat, meanwhile, was promoted from principal to partner in January 2015. He led the investment in Carwow when he was a principal investor, and is also a board director or advisor at Qubit, Wooga, Housetrip, Rentify, Nutmeg, Prodigy Finance, and Patients Know Best.

30. Matt Brittin of Google

In February 2015, Google appointed Matt Brittin, formerly head of its Northern/Central European operations, its President of EMEA Business and Operations -- the first person to hold the role. In short, he's Google's most senior employee on the continent -- giving him serious influence in tech circles.

He originally studied at Cambridge University, where he was a keen rower -- even competing in the Olympics. He subsequently worked for McKinsey & Co., then Trinity Mirror, before joining the search giant.

28. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales is best known as one of the cofounders of online encyclopedia Wikipedia -- and that recently passed a significant milestone recently, turning 15 years old in January 2016.

But the 49-year-old Alabama-born Londoner has had other accomplishments to note over the last months. In July, his latest project, The People's Operator (TPO), launched in the US.

For those not in the know, TPO is an 'ethical' mobile network that gives a cut of its proceeds to charities of its users' choosing. It also launched social networking functionality in 2015, now framing itself as 'a social network with a unique business model' -- 'an ad-free social space that is supported by a one-of-a-kind mobile network.'

Wales also has a personal charity under his belt -- The Jimmy Wales Foundation, which focuses on championing freedom of speech causes worldwide.

27. Tom Blomfield of Mondo

Mondo

Blomfield is the CEO and cofounder of Mondo, a new London fintech startup that's building a branchless bank using its debit card and accompanying app. Mondo cards are controlled through the app, and show users information about the purchases they make.

26. Leanne Kemp of Everledger

Everledger is a startup that wants to make diamond theft a thing of the past.

It uses the blockchain -- the ledger of all bitcoin transactions -- to make a public record that valuable diamonds can be registered to, recording their unique characteristics. This should make it harder to pawn stolen diamonds, and help cut down on fraud.

The company was created by the Australian Leanne Kemp in 2015, and took part in the Barclays Techstars accelerator in June.

Nearly 900,000 diamonds have been registered to Everledger's platform already, and another 900,000 are queued up. Later down the line, it intends to start registering other luxury goods.

25. YouTube star Zoella

Zoella is the well-known British YouTube vlogger who shares updates about fashion, make-up, and her life. Earlier in February 2016 it was announced that she has reached 10 million YouTube subscribers, and her videos have been watched over 1 billion times.

Mendelsohn was given a CBE in the Queen's birthday honours list in June for her work in creative industries. Aside from her work at Facebook, she's also co-chair of the Creative Industries Council, a joint forum between the creative industry and the UK government.

Mendelsohn joined Facebook in July 2013, having previously served as executive chairman of advertising agency Karamarama. She spent 20 years working for advertising agencies before making the move to the social-networking giant.

23. Former Index Ventures partner Saul Klein

Klein is a well-known investor in Europe, formerly of Index Ventures. He joined Index in 2007, and invested in successful tech companies such as Songkick, Chartbeat, and MyHeritage. He left the VC firm in May 2015 to focus on his personal investments.

Klein is also known for cofounding movie rental service LoveFilm and serving as its CEO, being one of Skype's original executives, and cofounding the Seedcamp startup accelerator program. He cofounded DIY computer company Kano with his cousin Alex Klein back in 2013.

22. Claire Valoti of Snapchat

She works as Snapchat's general manager of UK sales, overseeing the company's first office outside the US. The company has made a series of hires for its European team from rival digital media and tech businesses over the past year.

21. Ismail Ahmed of WorldRemit

WorldRemit

Somali-born Ismail Ahmed worked for the UN to help crackdown on money laundering before setting up WorldRemit in 2010. The startup offers an app that lets migrants send money back to family in places like Africa, India, and Latin America, known as remittance.

The company was valued at $500 million (£345 million) in a $100 million (£69 million) funding round last year, led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), which has also backed the likes of Facebook, Spotify, and Netflix. WorldRemit recently secured a further $45 million (£31 million) line of credit to fund growth and is processing 400,000 transactions a month.

20. Julian Assange of WikiLeaks

John Stillwell - WPA Pool/Getty Images

Is Julian Assange part of the British tech scene -- or the Ecuadorian?

Because while the WikiLeaks founder is geographically located in London, he remains under Ecuador's jurisdiction: In 2012, he took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in Knightsbridge to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning over allegations of sexual assault and rape, and has remained there ever since.

18. Rob Whitehead and Herman Narula of Improbable

Rob Whitehead (CTO) and Herman Narula (CEO) are the two-man founder team behind Improbable, a London startup that wants to be the 'Google of simulation.'

The duo went to the University of Cambridge together, and in 2012 founded Improbable, which builds software that can power sophisticated simulations done by others. It provides the engine to do the heavy lifting, so you can get on with the business of actually modelling whatever it is you want to model.

The company's original focus was on gaming -- massive multiplayer game-worlds -- but it has applications in science, research, defence, and more.

It landed a $20 million (£14 million) in venture capital funding from well-respected US firm Andreessen Horowitz in 2015 -- its second ever investment in the UK.

In November 2015, it officially launched SpatialOS, its operating system. Alongside the launch, it announced an ambitious flagship project -- a virtual city run in collaboration with academics to answer questions about modern urban life. 'We're going to have an oracle for an entire city,' Narula told Business Insider. 'We'll be able to answer questions like 'what happens when we introduce autonomous vehicles,' or look at interactions between different things that have just been (previously) impossible.'

16. Azmat Yusuf of Citymapper

Twitter

Former Googler Azmat Yusuf founded Citymapper in 2011 as a guide for Londoners to navigate the city's bus network. The app evolved into a multimodal travel platform and today it is used by millions of people worldwide.

15. Rohan Silva of Second Home

Rohan Silva/Second Home

Silva is the former government technology advisor who was part of the team that created the Tech City UK initiative. He worked closely with George Osborne since 2006, and oversaw the growth of the UK's startup scene, playing a key role in the government's relationship with the growing tech cluster.

It was announced in January that Second Home had raised £7.5 million from investors including Yuri Milner, Tencent chairman Martin Lau, and venture capital firm Index Ventures, and that it would use the money to expand to Lisbon.

13. Gareth Williams of Skyscanner

Skyscanner

Gareth Williams is the CEO and cofounder of Skyscanner, the Edinburgh-based company behind one of the world's most popular flight comparison sites.

Williams led the Edinburgh company through a £128 million funding round in January, valuing it at over a billion dollars. He also opened Skyscanner's first London office at the end of 2015, which is home to a team of engineers, led by former Amazon executive Bryan Dove.

Skyscanner also has offices in Shenzhen, Beijing, Barcelona, Glasgow, Miami, Singapore, and Sofia. During 2015, the company grew the size of its workforce to approximately 800 people.

12. Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP

Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images

Sir Martin Sorrell is the CEO of the world's largest advertising agency holding group, WPP.

WPP's agencies spend a huge amount on tech platforms, on behalf of their clients. Sorrell told us in January that WPP agencies spent around $4 billion (£2.8 billion) with Google (up 38% from 2014) and $1 billion (£693 million) with Facebook (up 56% on 2014) last year. WPP predict digital advertising will account for 40-45% of its revenue by 2019.

11. José Neves of Farfetch

José Neves launched Farfetch in 2008 as a way to marry boutique fashion retailers with customers, many of whom likely didn't know the products existed. The company has taken over $190 million (£130 million) in funding and is now worth over $1 billion (£690 million), making it a 'Unicorn.'

The company's investors include Conde Nast and Index Ventures. It's headquartered in London but has offices in New York, Los Angeles, Guimarães, Porto, São Paulo, Shanghai and Tokyo.

The average users spend over $600 (£400) on Farfetch in a single session and the company is doing over $160 million (£110 million) in revenue per year.

Unruly specialises in serving and analysing video advertising and brand videos that appear outside the confines of YouTube and Facebook. Its technology allows marketers to buy 'native' video ad formats using automated technologies and track their performance across social. The company also offers an analytics tool that predicts whether videos are likely to viral.

9. Jon Reynolds of SwiftKey

SwiftKey

Jon Reynolds started SwiftKey straight out of Cambridge University. The mission, according to Reynolds, is 'to make it easy for everyone to create and communicate on mobile.' The app, which is available on iPhone and Android, is used by more than 300 million people and relies heavily on artificial intelligence to predict what, exactly, the user is trying to say.

8. Sean Murray of Hello Games

Sean Murray is the CEO of Hello Games, a Guildford company that is building one of the most ambitious video games ever made. 'No Man's Sky' is an attempt to create an entire universe in an online video game environment, which will contain 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets.

It's a project of epic scale, and Hello Games has started to show off its progress. Stars like Kanye West, Steven Spielberg, and Elon Musk have all been given demonstrations of the game in 2015.

7. Nigel Eccles of FanDuel

Photo: Nigel Eccles/ Twitter/ @nigeleccles.

Nigel Eccles is the founder and CEO of Edinburgh-based FanDuel, which is a fantasy sports platform that allows people in North America to create one-day fantasy teams and enter them into leagues with cash prizes.

High-profile investors such as Google Capital, Time Warner Investments and Turner Sports backed FanDuel last summer in a $275 million (£176 million) round, which brought total investment in the company up to $361 million (£234 million).

6. Riccardo Zacconi of King

King

You have, of course, heard of 'Candy Crush.' You can't not. It's the insanely popular candy-swiping mobile app made by King Digital Entertainment.

Riccardo Zacconi is the man at the wheel at King, and he's had a very good year: In November 2015, Activision Blizzard (the gaming megacompany behind 'Call of Duty,' 'Starcraft,'' World of Warcraft,' and more) acquired King for a massive $5.9 billion (£4.1 billion).

Zacconi, who is Italian and lives in London, cofounded King in 2003, and is its CEO. At the time of the acquisition, the company boasted 330 million monthly active users.

Headcount: 3,261

5. Samir Desai of Funding Circle

Funding Circle

Samir Desai is the founder of peer-to-peer business loan platform Funding Circle. The platform lets savers lend directly to businesses and over £1 billion has been lent over the platform since it launched in 2010. The company was valued at $1 billion (£690 million) last year.

Former management consultant Desai moved to the role of Global CEO last year to oversee expansion into new markets and in October Funding Circle entered Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands with the acquisition of Zencap. Desai had the idea for the business while working on a project at Northern Rock.

4. Kristo Kaarmann and Taavet Hinrikus of TransferWise

Kristo Kaarmann and Taavet Hinrikus are the Estonian co-founders of low cost online international money transfer service TransferWise. The pair's marketing savvy has helped turn the startup into one of the few London companies valued at $1 billion (£690 million) after attracting a $58 million (£40 million) investment last year from top Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Other investors include Sir Richard Branson and Paypal founder Peter Thiel. Before TransferWise, Hinrikus was Skype's first employee. TransferWise went global in 2015 and has already passed the $1 billion transferred mark in the US.

3. Julie Adenuga of Beats 1

The tech world was abruptly introduced to 27-year-old Londoner Julie Adenuga in June 2015, when she was announced as one of three global presenters for Beats 1.

Along with veteran BBC radio DJ Zane Lowe and New Yorker Ebro Darden, Adenuga is the face of Apple's flagship new internet radio station -- broadcasting from her London studio.

She may be a new face to techies, but she has strong roots in London's music scene. In 2010, she joined the city's underground radio station Rinse FM. 'We had no DJ experience, but we just played the music and were talking rubbish,' she said. 'It worked. Luckily.'

And let's not forget her family: Alongside Julie, there's also Joseph and Jamie Adenuga -- better known as London grime artists Skepta and JME.

2. William Shu of Deliveroo

Deliveroo

William Shu launched his restaurant food delivery company in London in 2012 after realising it was hard to get good quality food delivered to your home or office.

The former investment banker has subsequently expanded Deliveroo to more than 30 UK cities and over 20 international cities. The growth has been fuelled with $200 million (£138 million) in venture capital funding, half of which was raised last November.

Shu has managed to attract popular London restaurants such as Dishoom, Ping Pong, and Dirty Burger to Deliveroo, where they can access an even larger customer base in exchange for approximately 30% of every transaction.

1. Eileen Burbidge MBE of Passion Capital

Eileen Burbidge

Eileen Burbidge founded investment fund Passion Capital in 2011 with Stefan Glaenzer and Robert Dighero. Since then, Passion Capital has invested in a series of successful London companies including DueDil, GoCardless, GoSquared, and Smarkets.

But the biggest news of 2015 for Burbidge was when she took the job of Chair of Tech City UK, the organisation that works to promote the UK's tech startups, in September. She's the new public figurehead for the organisation.